On Her Majesty's Secret Service

This morning we said goodbye to Devon and caught the 9.28 from Teignmouth Station to London. Train travel is one of our favourite modes of transport and this trip was nice and smooth.

This is a return to London for us, what's more we are even staying in the same Hotel as last time. We are enjoying the familiarity and even dined tonight at one of the pubs we visited 5 years ago.

As soon as were checked into our room at 2pm and refreshed, we set out to discover or rediscover the city. We hadn't gone far when we saw Tate Britain at Millbank on the Thames.

A beautiful building inside and out, the interior was bright, filled with natural light. 

The tall ceilings were well suited to long installations of art.

The Gallery is a permanent home to a large collection of works by Turner including this self-portrait.

The unexpectedness of some of the work on display reminded us of our MONA experience in Tasmania, like this one made from toast.

After refreshments in the Cafe we continued along the Thames crossing over on the Lambeth Bridge.

We then continued along the Albert Embankment before returning back to the other side of the river via Vauxhall Bridge. Two of the buildings that got our interest during our walk we discovered to be MI 5 and The Secret Service. 

During our walk we came across a number of high powered Floodlights with generators and bundles of heavy duty cables and of course security people wearing Highvis vests. We became very interested and when we returned to our Hotel we carried out some Google research looking for any filming that might be taking place on the Thames.

Excitement plus, Advance notice indicated the Lambeth Bridge would be closed tonight between 8pm and 5.00am tomorrow morning for filming. More research revealed that the filming is for the next James Bond film Spectre being released in November. We couldn't resist a return to the river after dinner to see it lit up with more lights than usual. There was some action with boats along the river and a helicopter made a low level appearance and hovered around somewhat on a few occasions. Designated marshals wandered up and down asking spectators not to use flash photography.

We shall always feel we have a special  Bond with London now.